


(When We've All) Come Undone

by flipflop_diva



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Awesome Sam Wilson, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Killer Robots, Minor Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov, Natasha Needs a Hug, Protective Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4415993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha was cold, and not the kind of cold where she needed to slip on a pair of gloves, but the kind where she felt like she was never going to be warm again. And the only people she had for help were the three teammates who remained after seemingly endless battles with Ultron. An apocalyptic AU starting with Age of Ultron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(When We've All) Come Undone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



> DesertVixen, you asked for a post-Age of Ultron, perhaps alternate reality-type setting, so I hope this fits that a little! It was fun imagining this world, and I hope you enjoy it. Happy Apocalypse!

Natasha was cold, and not the kind of cold where she needed to slip on a pair of gloves, but the kind where she felt like she was never going to be warm again. She thought she remembered being cold, when she was a young girl in the Red Room, sent out with the other girls into a Russian winter in flimsy nightgowns.

“Find a way to survive, or you don’t come back,” their handlers had told them.

Natasha had been the youngest back then, but she had been the first one to shoot at the bear. She remembered huddling with the freshly skinned fur for barely a minute until one of the older girls punched her in the face and took it away.

She had shivered through that night, but she had survived.

This seemed worse. This she felt like she was never going to recover from, felt like she was never going to be warm again, even as she was pressed up against Steve’s chest, his arms cradling her against his warm flesh as she shivered against him.

“Not helping?” She heard Sam’s voice over the sound of Steve’s heartbeat against her ear and her own shallow breaths, and she felt Steve shake his head as another blanket was draped over her.

She twisted her head to the side so she could see Sam, dressed in a now mostly tattered version of his Falcon suit that had survived a lot more than anyone expected. 

“I can’t believe you aren’t cold,” she muttered to him. “I’m never cold, but this …”

He reached out with a smirk and tousled her hair, the only part of her not covered under four layers. Her eyes narrowed. She had the urge to hit him, but that would require moving her hands back out into the cold, so she settled on glaring instead.

“I hate you,” she grumbled.

“You love me,” Sam answered, then titled his head at Steve. “Though I know not as much as you love the furnace over here.”

“You’re really not cold?” she asked. Sam didn’t _seem_ cold at all — in fact he appeared totally unfazed by any environmental factor whatsoever — but it made no sense. She was pretty sure she could feel her fingers freezing, despite Steve’s super-serum-powered heater that she had been lying against for the past thirty-two hours.

Sam shook his head. “But don’t worry,” he said. “There is some other fucked up stuff going on with the rest of us.”

Natasha instantly pushed herself up off Steve, her internal alarms already going off. She shivered, almost violently, as the air seemed to swirl even colder around her, but she ignored it even as she commanded, “Tell me.”

Sam glanced over at Steve, almost as if he were looking for permission, before talking. “Okay,” he said. “Well, the last few times I’ve tried flying … let’s just say there has been more falling than flying. And I’m talking feeling like a lead weight is attached to my body kind of falling. And then Wanda, well, she says she keeps seeing Pietro everywhere. And not mistakingly thinking someone is him but actually _seeing_ him. And then Steve …” He turned to Steve.

“Ice,” Steve answered for him, his voice almost sounding hollow. “I’m alone in a room and it turns to ice. I’ve, ummm …” He trailed off for a second, running his hand through his hair, “… been trying not to be alone since it started. Hard to find a way out.”

Natasha stared at Steve, almost speechless. He hadn’t _told_ her any of this, but yet it explained so much. Like why he had seemed so perfectly okay letting her leech off of his warmth for so long without a break.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she managed to asked, keeping her voice as steady as she could, despite the fact that her teeth were almost literally clattering. She clenched her jaw to try and stop them and forced herself not to tug the blanket tighter around her.

Steve had the decency to look guilty while Sam just shrugged. “You haven’t been well,” Sam said, as if that were a reason.

“I’m cold,” Natasha bit out at him, “not an invalid.”

“I didn’t …” Sam started, but Steve’s hands on both their shoulders stopped him.

“We should have told you,” Steve said, his voice softer. She glared because she knew what he was doing — trying to placate her like she were a child. She knew his next words before he said them. “We were trying to protect you.”

“How many times have I told you I don’t need you to protect me?” she almost snarled. “I’m not scared of Ultron. Not anymore.”

She had been, once. In the beginning. When he had taken her out from under the nose of her teammates. When he had tortured her ruthlessly for hours just for fun. When he had come after her, over and over again, after Sokovia had fallen from the sky and they had watched cities fall and people die. When Ultron had found a way to create duplicates of himself but still he had come to her, always there in her dreams and in the mirror and in everything she touched.

Even when they finally escaped underground, she had still felt his presence around her, whispering in her ear, even as everyone assured her she was safe.

And then it happened. The Avengers last stand. They had gone after Ultron, faced him head on, SHIELD agents and Hydra agents and even former KGB agents at their back, humanity all fighting for one cause.

Natasha didn’t remember much of the fight. She remembered pain and screams and the vacant look in her best friend’s eyes as he took his last breath. She remembered Steve dragging her away, keeping her safe.

And she remembered, at the last second, before Sam grabbed them both and shoved them into the only remaining undestroyed Quinjet, turning around and staring at Ultron — she knew it was Ultron, even with the hundreds of lookalikes around them — looking him straight in the eye and knowing, _knowing_ , she would never fear him again. He took their world, their friends, their teammates, their lives as they had once known them, and she wasn’t going to let him control her for a moment more.

And she hadn’t. Even now, freezing in a bunker buried so far underground nothing could detect them, so cold her fingers were actually turning blue, she wasn’t scared of Ultron or of any of his robotic minions. She had survived everything life had thrown at her. She was going to survive this too.

In this messed up world, it was the only thing she clung to, besides the three teammates who still remained.

“We’re sorry,” Steve repeated. “We should have told you.”

“You should have,” she said, but she didn’t have the energy, or the desire, to fight with him. His words, Sam’s words, they were running through her head as though on a loop. Everyone witnessing a form of their own personal hell — being back in the ice, falling and failing instead of flying and saving people, seeing the person whose death haunted your every waking moment and being so cold she was transported back to being the helpless little girl she once was, a little girl who hadn’t known what was wrong and what was right.

But she knew now and something about this …

She frowned.

“Nat?” 

It took her a few seconds to move, to blink, to focus. Both Steve’s hands were on her arms now, squeezing her. She had no idea when he had done that, but she shifted her eyes to his and noticed he looked scared.

“He’s manipulating reality,” she whispered.

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed. She saw the small crease form between his eyes. “What?”

“Ultron,” she said. “He’s manipulating reality. To call us out.”

“That’s impossible,” Sam said.

Natasha almost laughed. “Is it?” she said. “He’s everywhere, in everything. He has been since he was in the Internet when we first fought him.”

“But this bunker is undetected,” Sam insisted. “No one knows we’re down here.”

“No one except the twenty-three hundred people we’ve managed to save.”

“Twenty-four hundred and twelve.”

A voice sounded behind her. Natasha turned around to see Wanda, dressed as she always was in her dark red cape, the bottom still stained with a spot of her brother’s blood — “It helps me remember why I’m here,” she told Natasha one night when Natasha finally couldn’t keep herself from asking. Wanda’s arms were crossed, and her expression was serious.

“Twenty-four hundred and twelve,” Natasha repeated. “That’s a lot of opportunities.”

“Someone told Ultron we were here?” Sam said, then sighed. “Dude, that is fucked up.”

“That is survival,” Wanda said. “People do what they think they have to do when they are desperate.”

“So he’s what?” Sam said. “Calling us out?”

Natasha nodded, so did Wanda. Beside Natasha, Steve let out a soft laugh. “Of course he is. We all knew this fight wasn’t over.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “There are four of us. How much of a fight can we possibly put up?”

“We’re not four of us,” Wanda said. “We are twenty-four hundred and twelve.”

“You just said one of those betrayed us,” Sam reminded her.

“Yes,” she said. “But I can see into their heads. I know who can be trusted.”

Steve tilted his head at that. “I don’t like it,” he said.

“I don’t like any of this,” Natasha said. “But that’s never stopped us before.”

“We had a team then,” Steve said.

Natasha smiled at him. She leaned over and took his hand. “We have a team now. Damaged and beaten up maybe, but still a team.”

“Well, we did always say we’d go down fighting,” Sam put in.

“Really?” Steve said. He looked unsure. “You guys really want to do this? Fight Ultron? Again?”

His eyes roamed from Sam to Wanda and finally to Natasha, all of them nodding in turn. Steve shook his head. “This might be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” he said. 

“It might be the last thing we ever do,” Sam said.

“No, it won’t.” Natasha said. Even as the words left her mouth, she felt Steve squeeze her fingers. She didn’t know where the words had come from or how she could possibly know the future, but through the veil of cold that she had been living in for the past few days, she finally felt a spark of warmth, and she knew without a doubt that what she said was true.

Fighting Ultron, it wasn’t the end of them, it was the beginning of the end of him. And she was ready. _They_ were ready. It was time.

She rose to her feet, feeling warmer than she had in days.

“Avengers,” she said. “Let’s go.”


End file.
